Justin Time: Klentner Ranch Wins

High-goal season at the Santa Barbara Polo Club ended on a soaringly high note when longtime patron Justin Klentner‘s Klentner Ranch team hoisted the 109-year-old Silver Air Pacific Coast Open trophy, the most prestigious tournament on the Left Coast, for the first time.

Although Justin, who has had his team for six years, was unable to play in the hotly contested six chukker game against club president John Muse‘s Lucchese team – four-time winners including a three-peat between 2010 and 2012 with 10-goal player Argentinian Adolfo Cambiaso in the lineup – because of a broken hand, his 18-year-old son, Jake, a student at SMU in Dallas, was an admirable stand-in, adding two vital goals to the final 8-6 score.

More than 4,000 spectators turned out for the match for the impressive five-foot-high silver and gold trophy, crowned with an eagle, with the players, Jesse Bray, Jake Klentner, Mariano Obregon, and MVP Remy Muller, also receiving, for the first time, polo’s version of an NFL Super Bowl ring in gold, with black and white diamonds, designed by the club’s official jeweler, Tara Gray, a former Miss Alabama.

Former club president and Long Beach banker Dan Walker also bought the rings for his Farmers & Merchants Bank team, who won the previous year’s tournament beating real estate developer Justin’s team 11-10.

As the Klentner Ranch team soaked themselves in champagne, a private Boeing business jet, which had flown in from Hawaii, did a fly over of the Carpinteria oceanside club to mark the occasion.

Among the horde of horsey types turning out for the occasion were Glen and Gloria Holden, Robert and Robin Fell, Ron and Hudson Macleod, Mike and Claudia Uretz, Curtis Skene, Chris and Mindy Denson, Chip Lawson, Phil Heatley, Christopher Lancashire and Catherine Gee, Brian Fagan, Nigel Gallimore, James Golden, Charles Ward, Dan and Linda Walker, Paige Beard, Dana Hansen, Joel Ladin, Jennifer Zacharias, Richard and Annette Caleel, Nolan Nicholson, Chuck and Margarita Lande, Henry Walker, Amanda Masters, Luke Klentner, Morten and Lisa Wengler, Madison Richardson, and Kenny Loggins.